Lawyers may experience trauma, known as vicarious trauma, arising from the content of the legal work they perform or because their client has suffered trauma.
In that sense, lawyers are no different from other occupations which experience trauma, such as medical practitioners or first responders, recognising that the experience for lawyers may be less direct than in other occupations but not necessarily carrying with it lesser consequences.
Vicarious trauma can cause, or aggravate, psychiatric conditions in lawyers, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The result, at the end of the scale, may be an ongoing incapacity for work, with major loss of income, and significant pain and suffering or, even worse, suicide.
Trauma may be experienced by a lawyer in many different types of legal work – for example, a family lawyer may have a client who has been subjected to domestic violence, a personal injury lawyer with a seriously injured client, a criminal lawyer dealing with violent or horrific crimes, including child exploitation cases, a workplace relations lawyer with a bullied client, an immigration lawyer dealing with separated families – the list is varied and endless.
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